Sunday, October 17, 2010

Scarlets went down to a heavy defeat against the Leicester Tigers in the Heineken Cup earlier today at Welford Road. Despite the 46-10 loss though, they did manage to score another great try for the second week running.

It's perhaps a bit strange singing the praises of a try that was scored before taking a 46 point hiding, but on it's own it was a great effort and they spread the ball and stayed in support for a number of pinpoint passes to go to hand. Last week it was Rhys Priestland, this time it was Morgan Stoddart who got on the end of the flowing team move.

After the first half it was all Leicester though, who scored some great tries of their own. Matt Smith, Martin Castrogiovanni, Ben Youngs, Thomas Waldrom, and Tom Croft all scored tries as they pulled away from the Welsh region. Croft scored twice himself.

Toby Flood did the rest with two penalties and five conversions as the home side put themselves about the park, featuring some clinical play from scrumhalf Youngs, and a few trademark charges from powerful wing Alesana Tuilagi.

Some of the other tries from the game will be posted in this rounds Best Tries compilation sometime during the week. If you spotted anything else this weekend that you think should be featured on the site, please get in touch.

The return game will be interesting in this fixture. I'd be really worried for English rugby if Leicester were struggling against the Scarlets - LI sneaked a win at home against a sub-par Munster, but most of the English clubs haven't covered themselves in glory so far. A good win for Northampton and this thumping win by Leicester have been the bright spots.

Do the Scarlets have a Turkish fan club? Spotted the flag there. Great try. Leicester were far too strong in the second half but I guess the Scarlets will still be very disappointed that the game went so massively away from them in the 20 minutes after half-time.

Great rugby played by both sides in this game - I'm a Leicester fan and I was applauding after this try, brilliant hands. Leicester played some pretty sexy stuff themselves though. Think we had nearly all the possession so the Scarlets were bound to get tired after defending all 1st half.

I get p*ssed off with the Sky Commentators though who were constantly saying things like 'it's power against guile' and 'grunt against flair'...f*ck off. Yes we have an aggressive and powerful pack, but a little research will tell you that we are the top try scorers in England and Europe. You don't manage that by sticking it up the jumper.

Another one for the highlights reel, its only October and we have quite a few this season already.

Unfortunately, Leicester didn't join in the fun and decided to actually tackle and smash us in the collisions and the tight exchanges. Until we can sort out our front 5 (Rees apart) we won't beat big sides.

In the last few years, whenever we have played a big side in a important match (Leinster, Toulon, Cardiff, Ospreys, Leicester) we have taken an absolute pasting. We need to sort it out if we are to move from a tier 2 side to a tier 1 side.